What’s with the weird name?

The name is the literal description of what the engine is: “A collection of tech/concepts/ideas that are only relevant to a small, technical group of folks”. Plus naming things is hard and this was the best I could come up with.

Is this engine ready to use off the shelf?

No. While large chunks of it are “production ready” there are just as many missing elements or incomplete features. This engine is intended as a prototype framework engine for programmers/technical artists or as a starter pack for your own engine.

Unreal/Unity/Godot exist so what’s the point of this?

The goals of those engines is to provide off-the-shelf tools for creating a game. The goal of Esoterica is to provide a simple and clear framework for learning about how to build certain pieces of tech as well as for experimenting with new and interesting techniques. It is also provided for anyone that might want to start building their own engine or simulation framework and want to get a head start on a lot of the ‘boring’ stuff like resource pipelines, reflection and tools.

Esoterica could also be used in a university environment to teach game dev students about game engine development something like the internal engine that Digipen used to used for their courses.

Can you make some parts of the engine i.e., animation system, a standalone package?

Unfortunately not since a lot of the real value of the animation system is in the tools. The runtime is extremely simple and can easily be ported over to another engine but the tooling will need to be rebuilt. So there is no benefit in me trying to strip it out while there is value in providing a working reference example of how to build it plus all the code. This goes for all other systems in the engine, it all presented as a free-to-use/free-to-copy reference.

Can I use pieces of this tech in my own engine/project?

Take whatever you like! Fork it, Port it, go nuts. I’m just glad you find it useful!

I think this is cool and I’d like to help, how can I do that?

Please check the “contribute” page for ways that you could help with the development of Esoterica.